Italian president grants partial pardon to former CIA agent Sabrina De Sousa

Italian president Sergio Mattarella has effectively pardoned a former CIA agent convicted of involvement in the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric as part of a controversial US programme that kidnapped suspects for interrogation.

Sabrina De Sousa, a 61-year-old American citizen, was arrested in Portugal and was to have been handed over to Italy to serve a four-year prison sentence on Wednesday.

But a statement released by the president's office late on Tuesday said president Mattarella had granted a partial pardon reducing De Sousa’s sentence by a year to three-years, without the need to serve a prison term.

The statement said the president had based his decision on "the attitude of the sentenced party, the fact that the United States has discontinued the practice of extraordinary renditions and the need to weigh up the penalty with that of others convicted of the same offence".

The former agent was originally sentenced to a seven-year term which was then reduced to four years. De Sousa, who left the CIA in 2009, was detained in Portugal last week after a two-year fight against extradition and was due to be put on a plane once formalities between Portuguese and Italian police were concluded.

While the former president Barack Obama ended the programme years later, the US government had expressed concern about De Sousa's treatment.

"We are deeply disappointed in her conviction and sentence," acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a recent statement. "This is a matter that US officials have been following closely.”

De Sousa lost several appeals against extradition since her arrest at Lisbon Airport in October 2015 on a European warrant. She had argued she was never officially informed of the Italian court conviction and couldn't use confidential US government information to defend herself.

Other Americans convicted in the case have also received clemency from the Italian president.

De Sousa, who was born in India and holds both US and Portuguese passports, said she had been living in Portugal and intended to settle there. She was on her way to visit her elderly mother in India with a roundtrip ticket when she was detained.